I am willing to concede one point to the gun-rights crowd about background checks and whether they would have prevented the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn.

The National Rifle Association has been saying repeatedly that background checks wouldn’t have prevented the madman from killing 20 children, six educators, his own mother and then himself.

I can agree to that single point.

Adam Lanza’s weaponry came from his mother’s house. He took the guns from dear ol’ Mom and killed her with one of them before he set out to slaughter the rest of his victims. Mrs. Lanza had obtained the weapons legally. Why she owned a Bushmaster, though, remains a mystery.

But the point is that checking Adam Lanza’s background is irrelevant as it relates to this particular crime.

The NRA’s use of the Sandy Hook example to make its point about background checks, though, begs the bigger issue … which is that background checks can block known criminals from purchasing weapons they might want to use to harm other human beings.